A Four Fold Franciscan Blessing
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore.

AMEN

And now for something completely different:
The Ludicrous Adventures of
Hoody Man and SuperComputerWoman
Part One of One:
A Nefarious Epilogue of a Grand Adventure

The buzz of the alarm is exacerbating—I mean really who invented those stupid things with the infernal “beep beep” in twelve degrees of repressed-rejected Star Wars sound effects, now before the fabled reader thinks this is Hoody Man or SuperComputerWoman (SCW) complaining, alas dear friend, no…this is the erstwhile narrator who dislikes awakening suddenly, but unlike SCW is much a morning person (due to the fact of copious amounts of caffeine and if one needs to be awake, they might as while smile, baffles the outside world).
You see a narrator is needed to try and keep the facts straight as they are seen by the impartial third party, think of me as Stan Lee and his infamous Bullpen from the 1960’s era of Marvel Comics (`Nuff said, to complete the copyright theft lol).
Ahhh the sun is rising in Herovilla (one of those fun Tran warp thingies off of Star Trek and the ilk, that allows both Hoody Man and SuperComputerWoman to exist within our reality, but not really—man you readers really need to be enlightened and read comics, I am getting tired explaining everything).

Ahhh this long weekend is one of the major downsides of a long distance relationship (there surprisingly are many cool upsides that I am sure SWC will tell you about), but there's cool festivals on tomorrow in Calgary here--Festival of Chariots and Festival of India, down in AZ they are having a family night at church--just things that normal couples could easily call up and go and do, sadly cannot happen on the spur of the moment.
But the upside you ask of this audacious torture? of the inconvenience on not immediate gratification? We actually communicate extremely well lol...and I probably know more about SWC than any other girl I've dated. So yes it has its pros and cons.

If you are looking for a unique way to teach following a calling from God to high school youth groups, I would suggest Daredevil (yes the Ben Affleck movie)...it has amazing imagery, yes it is Catholic Church imagery, but we're all part of the church universal and it is a great dialogue starter.
Also to teach youth to share their faith stories, use Star Trek V.

Hoody Man in AB (wish SCW would make it so my name had the funky link thing)

Canadians and even those of the international community (anyone reading this) need to help stop the destruction of our health care system by our own government. Or as I said it in my campaign blog:Even at 8 years old young Tommy Douglas realized it was a great evil for a family to have to go into poverty to heal a child.If you believe that Health Care (and excellent health care) should be available to everyone regardless of the size of the bank account, please click on the link and send a letter to the Federal Health Minister (just click on the link or if that fails copy and paste it into your address bar) http://cupe.ca/action/privateclinics

Ahh creeping towards the wee hours up north here in Canada. Yes there is a unique challenge to this dynamic duo as we are almost a continent apart lol. Never mind the fact that we both are aclimatized to very different climates.

But I thought it was a good night to just drop a line, and put out there the idea of how complicated we can make things in the church. On my other blog I tossed out a line from a song about prayer, but even Bible Study I think we tend to make it too complex for newbies, that it can actually scare them away from reading the Bible. I mean it is an imposing book to first look at, and then some have the audacity to say you need all this other stuff to properly understand the Word, when it is the Bible that will speak to us.
Funny story about the Bible: There was a huge church planting operation happening in China (SCW will appreciate this, it was Southern Baptist)....and the North American Church asked what was needed, the planters responded Bibles (as good church planters will hopefully)...any ways thousands of Bibles were shipped overseas, distributed and the church members eagerly snatched them up. Finally able to read the word's of Christ for themselves, then this little boy came up to the pastor. "Why is Jesus mad at me? why does he hate me?" he asked through tears.
You see, the Bibles had the Words of Jesus in red, and for that culture things written in red ink meant that the reader was hated, despised and unloved. Yes even in our printing process we can make the Word too complicated.
Hmmm....What barriers does your church have to welcoming new people in? (a shared passion of ours is Unlocking the Kingdom to those kept out of the normal church clique and throw open the doors to teens in the neighbourhoods!!--check out the Presbyterian Record archives for my column on Unlocking the Kingdom)
-Hoody Man in AB

Welcome to the christening of Hoody Man and SuperComputer Woman's blog spot. What can you expect here? As we both quickly learned after meeting, THE UNEXPECTED when we're together! Hoody's a Socialist Christian looking at the Canadian church, politics and his own faith as he tries to follow the rule of St. Francis of Assisi and I'm Southern Baptist Refusenik in the Conservative Belt of America trying to live out the Gospel as God's Daughter to help explain what I mean. For those of you scratching your heads, don't worry you'll figure it out. (lol) Throw on top that we’re both youth pastors and it make for some very interesting stories indeed. Totally brought together by the divine providence of God's hand we're learning our Lord has an INTERESTING sense of humor. So kick back and enjoy the ride because all things are possible with God on our side. - SuperComputer Woman in AZ

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him.